


Among Starlight

by helenblackthorn



Category: Dark Artifices Series - Cassandra Clare, Mortal Instruments Series - Cassandra Clare
Genre: F/F, Family, Family Feels, M/M, Other, Sibling Bonding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-03
Updated: 2015-10-03
Packaged: 2018-04-24 14:36:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,969
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4923385
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/helenblackthorn/pseuds/helenblackthorn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Helen and Mark venture to the place where it all started and bond beneath the stars (slightly au where the two missing Blackthorn’s have returned to Los Angeles)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Among Starlight

**Author's Note:**

> this is basically just one story composed of headcanon's, haha. enjoy! feedback appreciated. (helen-blackthorn.tumblr.com)

"The stars are so beautiful."

"A million different colours, bright and alive. The mortal sky is no comparison, really."

"You said you've named some?"

"Every night," Mark said, eyes to the sky. His lips were curved into a gentle smile, a bliss he hadn't felt properly since his return. "You were the that one there, see?" He raised his arm to point. "The North Star. The brightest for my best friend, my whole-blooded sister."

Helen found herself smiling, too, as she stared up at the horizon; her previous unease peeling away like a blanket she'd been bundled in. Her brother fell into silence beside her, his fingers curled into the grass, his feet bare. When she was young, Helen recalled finding the idea of wearing shoes strange, too. And then she discovered pumice stones. Things have since then changed.

"Are they what you remembered?" Mark asked, turning his head to look at her.

"No," Helen pursed her lips, kept her neck craned to see the stars she never wanted to take her eyes off of, as if they'd disappear when she did. "Memories I have of Faerie are almost like murky water. I could see, but just barely. That was a long time ago, Mark, I was too young. I'm older now. All the memories I have are of Los Angeles and an isolated island of snow and mountains on the coasts of Russia. Very boring, really."

"You're only 24."

"Don't age me," Helen laughed quietly. "I have two weeks left yet to enjoy being 23."

Mark snorted, smiling still. "By now Ty might have said something about bodies deteriorating to their death at 25." He commented, shrugging. "You're almost there, so maybe you  _are_  old."

"I suppose he would," she paused, finally turning and narrowing her eyes at him. "You know, I'm allowed to call myself old.  _You_  - not so much."

Her younger brother smiled but said nothing, and rose to his feet. He was swifter than she remembered, more agile than the clumsy teenager Helen grew up with. Then again, nothing about Mark was the same. She could not deny that he looked more a faerie than she once thought he could be. Without his voyance rune, without the memories of their childhood at the institute, one could not imagine him being Nephilim at all. Helen found she didn't mind. At least he embraced that part of himself, she thought, in ways she couldn't - despite it being forced upon him.

Mark turned to her and held out his hand. "Come on," he said as she took it, rising to her feet. "As much as I can sit and stargaze, there is a lot left I want to show you yet before we need to head back to L.A. Clear those murky memories and create new ones of this place."

"You don't call California home," Helen observed, though she wasn't sure why, dusting off her jeans.

"Do you?"

She withdrew her hand from his and said nothing.

Mark smiled sadly at her, but his mismatched eyes were empty; depthless, a thousand years old, a thousand shades of gold and seafoam. He'd aged years here she could tell, yet still looked no older than 18. "The institute might be where my home is but it doesn't quite feel like it yet," he said. "Faerie is familiar, the warmth beneath my skin. Not at first, not for a while. But it is now. I miss it until I fall asleep. I thought it would be easy, picking between the two. It isn't. I'm balancing between them."

"I understand," Helen sighed, "but not - not personally. Wrangel Island never felt like my home, even after being there for so long. It was only ever just a cold prison cell in the middle of nowhere. Aline and I were sure we'd go crazy there. But Los Angeles is so different now that it doesn't really feel like home anymore either."

"We're lost," said Mark, "just like when we were kids. Too much and not enough."

Before Helen could say anything else, Mark grabbed her wrist and pulled her along, into the treeline beyond the field they were in. Faerie was both quiet and loud at the same time. If she listened closely, Helen could hear a fiddler's tune somewhere far in the distance; the twinkling laugh of the pixies buzzing around. The flowers were vibrant and beautiful, full of life and colour beyond anything she's seen. She had half a mind to pick them and bring them back, but she didn't want to disturb them.

Mark led her through a throng of bushes for several minutes, bare feet noiseless against the dirt, to an archway along the path. Two thin trees intertwined with each other like vines, like a doorway, or an entrance. Her brother turned to look at her over his shoulder, and grinned, before promptly dragging her through it.

And it was like the entire world had warped around her. It wasn't  unnatural like entering Faerie, or leaving it. The pathway had disappeared, and instead they found themselves standing at the riverside, the water flowing noisily over rocks and further downstream. Helen couldn't help but smile.

"A shame Nephilim can't get passed the bad and realize the beauty of Faerie and it's magic, isn't it?" Mark asked. "Not all is good but not all is evil. You just have to be wise."

"Well, the Clave isn't wise," Helen retorted bitterly, and Mark snorted out a laugh. "I can understand caution, at least. I fought - I _killed_  faeries in the war. But to pin the blame on every single one, including ourselves...it's just unfair."

Mark dropped down and stuck his bare feet and ankles into the water, patting the ground beside him. Helen followed, rolling the legs of her jeans up so they wouldn't get wet. The water was freezing; so cold she was tempted to pull her feet out. But she had been in worse half naked; and that was a one time dare from Aline when the two were drunk and bored in the middle of the arctic. "I'm glad we've both accepted who we are through it all, though," Mark said. "You don't hide your ears anymore. I've stopped caring about other people's prejudices."

"Aline was a big help with that," Helen said fondly, "she always is. We can't be ashamed of who we are. We shouldn't have to be."

"Kieran says that often, to remind me when I need it." Mark said, "he's good. I think he would like you. I've told him a great deal about our family, to keep the memories alive. He told me once, when I mentioned you could sing like the bards of the Courts, that he wished he could hear it."

"Is he where you sneak off to?" Helen asked expectantly, and when Mark looked over at her apprehensively, she shrugged. "Jules told me you always run off."

"Gwyn too," Mark answered. "It's not easy to leave the ones you share your bed with. I cannot just forget them in favour of everyone at the institute."

"No," Helen could have gone without hearing that bit of personal information, but hadn't said so. She thought of Aline instead; how the first two weeks of her exile Helen had been miserable and alone without her. "That's impossible."

Silence swelled between the two of them, but it was not uncomfortable nor unwelcome. The sound of the streaming water was soft; a gentle background noise that Helen found calming. She wished they were near the sea, or the vast lakes so deep that mermaids could live in them. Helen hardly remembered the mermaids she had met when she was young, let alone the stories they weaved. She was wiser now, older, but she believed she would still find them all just as fascinating if she heard them again.

Aline would love them, she thought, though probably not at first. She was more likely to be skeptical of them, if anything. But their stories, she was sure Aline would love those.

"You seem sad now," Mark commented after a moment, voice quiet. "Lately I mean. We've all noticed."

Helen bit her lower lip and inhaled deeply through her nose. She didn't answer right away, mind working to put together an explanation without really explaining anything at all, simply because she didn't understand why she still carried this sadness with her anymore. "It fluctuates," she said instead, shrugging. "It has since the war, really. But I'm not sad now."

Mark shook his head, and his smile was small. "You always try to be vague with your problems, Elle." He said. "You bear the weights of others so they don't have to. Who helps you bear yours?"

"Like I said," Helen twirled a blade of grass between her fingers and then promptly broke it into pieces, "Aline always helps, whether she realizes it or not. She's more than I can ever ask for. I'm fine, Mark. Honestly, I am. If I wasn't you'd be able to tell."

Her brother hummed, thrumming his fingers through the clear water. It was dark, but the water almost seemed to glow beneath the starlight; and it was captivatingly beautiful in ways Helen couldn't describe. "We should talk about something else then." He said finally. "Like the constellations, or ice cream."

"Ice cream?" Helen repeated, grinning over at him. "That's random of you."

Mark shrugged. "I've missed it. My first week back, I ate an entire tub of it in one sitting out on the roof. Silla was angry with me. Apparently it was hers." She could feel his eyes on her, noting her raised eyebrows. "What? Don't make that face. It was cookie dough. That was always my favourite. Can you blame me?"

"I guess not," Helen answered, stretching out her legs and wiggling her toes in the water. "Lactose intolerant, remember? Last time I had ice cream I spent the whole night throwing up."

"Right," he nodded slowly, "that's unfortunate."

"I like to think that I'm doing okay without it," Helen teased, glancing over at him. Mark looked more at ease here than he had back in the Institute, especially while the Rosales were present, and she couldn't quite blame him for it. Without the trickery alight around her, Helen felt more calm than she ever thought she could be in Faerie at all. She wasn't sure if it was the blood that warmed within her veins when she came here that made her feel this way, or because it just had that effect on everybody. Helen supposed it was the former.

"Maybe we should head back." Helen offered, although she didn't quite want to leave so early. She just didn't want the kids, nor her wife or Uncle, to get suspicious of their whereabouts and question why it was she and Mark had decided to come. Though she supposed she was just being paranoid.

"We can come back another time," Mark assured, sensing her hesitation. "We're not tethered anywhere anymore. Let's stay a few more minutes though, we've only been here a couple hours. The rivers are of my favourite places, besides the sky, and I can't take you there."

Helen didn't argue. She leaned back on her hands, felt the dirt and grass beneath her palms, the water lapping at her ankles. Not far off, on the other side of the river, a stag fed on the leaves of the bushes, a pixie perched on his antlers. She understood, finally, why Mark had felt so at ease here, in ways she was sure none of their half-siblings could fully grasp. And she wished Aline were here, to appreciate Faerie's beauty with her.

Her breath left her in a contented sigh.

She only wished it was all more familiar. 


End file.
